N. Korea Crisis - Updated as News come to hand

Originally posted by Vitchilo
If it SHOWS SIGNS of additional provocation... basically... even if NKorea does NOTHING and just APPEARS that they MIGHT do something, SKorea will
strike?

Or am I reading this wrong?

Yes, but those signs have to be considerable.
They will be watching NK like a hawk at the moment, and if they so much as look like they are preparing anything in any of their known military
locations SK will probably take it out and go from there.

I believe this is now down to NK. If they put a foot wrong now it could very dramatically increase to all-out war. But I don't think they will. It
seems like NK are always after attention when their aid runs out.

As with most other events, this could be nothing more than another begging round for NK. But it is worrying that the scenario seems to become more
extreme each time they want the worlds attention.

You all can believe me or not, I really don't care either way, but this isn't very shocking and until it actually escalates, I don't believe it's
going to.

The DPRK and the ROK do these little dances several times a year, every year. In many of them, soldiers from both sides, and sometimes civilians, are
killed by enemy fire. This news really isn't as surprising as it may sound.

I lived in Uijongbu, ROK from December 1996 through December 1997. During that year, there were 3 different situations when fire was exchanged between
the two border countries. The bloodiest of those left 7 ROK soldiers and 14 DPRK soldiers dead.

Now, if the South destroys the freedom bridge in Panmunjom, then you need to worry. Until then, just give it a couple days and it'll likely blow over
as it always does.

The reason it's not big news is because it is not big news, these guys are at each others throats all the time..
No way would the un and most civilised nations on earth allow this to happen.. There is far to much to lose, for everyone concerned..

It beats all out nuclear war. Your argument about the cheating wife is not even close to this situation. Look back at history and you will see that
this incident will have disappeared by tomorrow. China will step in as the big brother and food supplies/aid will once again flow into NK.

Again, sorry to disappoint those seeking nuclear war but it just ain't a happening.

Originally posted by FreeSafety
You all can believe me or not, I really don't care either way, but this isn't very shocking and until it actually escalates, I don't believe it's
going to.

The DPRK and the ROK do these little dances several times a year, every year. In many of them, soldiers from both sides, and sometimes civilians, are
killed by enemy fire. This news really isn't as surprising as it may sound.

I lived in Uijongbu, ROK from December 1996 through December 1997. During that year, there were 3 different situations when fire was exchanged between
the two border countries. The bloodiest of those left 7 ROK soldiers and 14 DPRK soldiers dead.

Now, if the South destroys the freedom bridge in Panmunjom, then you need to worry. Until then, just give it a couple days and it'll likely blow over
as it always does.

It would not be surprising for rumblings of discontent to spread to the military as it is not immune to food shortages. Kim says troops do
not undergo physical training in the afternoon because they are too hungry. The World Food Programme says 6.2 million out of North Korea's
population of 23 million need food aid, but it is only able to reach 1.5 million, mainly young children and women, because of lack of
funds.

All that would do is kill a bunch of senior citizens and peasants. The military would turtle underground.

We would have to use bunker busters, and even then it would not be a foregone conclusion that we would get anything useful. They have been preparing
to be nuked for half a century, you know, and the reason the peasants (ie the non-military citizens of North Korea) are starving and have no
electricity is because all resources are bent on tunneling, creating underground factories and power plants, and stockpiling resources.

We'd basically have to cut into thousands of different facilities and manually inspect them in order to ascertain whether or not "we got 'em."
This would be difficult to impossible, at least without conscription. Even then it'd be really, really hairy.

The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, with neither side able to claim outright victory. Fifty years on, the truce is still all that
technically prevents North Korea and the US - along with its ally South Korea - resuming the war, as no peace treaty has ever been signed. Both sides
regularly accuse the other of violating the agreement, but the accusations have become more frequent as tensions rise over North Korea's nuclear
programme.

North Korea yesterday threatened to abandon the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean war, accusing the United States of plotting a pre-emptive
attack on the communist state. A spokesman of the North's Korean People's Army said that the US was building up reinforcements around the Korean
peninsula in preparations to attack the North, said the North's official news agency KCNA.

South Korea's Lee Myung-bak announced his retaliation plan for the attack on the Cheonan this morning in Seoul. Although restrained like he has
been for the past two months, the president finally referred to the possibility of war: "If our territorial waters, airspace or territory are
militarily violated, we will immediately exercise our right of self-defense." Moving from "passive defense to proactive deterrence" is a
significant shift for a country that seems to get pushed around by North Korea every year. Just this month South Korea fired warning shots when North
Korean ships ventured across the border.

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